Thursday, January 23, 2014

No one is paying very much attention to Egypt. That
includes President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry. Now you know why Egypt’s situation is improving.

Happily for Egyptians, even Timesmen Friedman and Kristof have better ways to
occupy their time. Again, less attention from those putative foreign policy
wizards seems to be a goodthing.

You know and I know and everyone else should know that the
liberal media and left leaning politicians are horrified at the fact that
political and economic progress in Egypt should have come about as a result of
a military coup.

Given a choice between the Muslim Brotherhood and the
Egyptian military, the Obama administration and its enablers have always
preferred the ideologically fanatical Brothers to anything that resembles the
martial culture of a military organization.

Every conservative’s favorite liberal, Kirsten Powers has
the story. In her USA Today column she reports on recent events in Egypt:

Egypt
made history over the weekend. For the first time, this ancient
society has a constitution that protects the rights of women, bans religious
discrimination and provides the framework for a government with more secular
values. This stands in stark contrast to Egypt's previous
constitutions.

The
country's elections commission announced Saturday that the groundbreaking
constitution was approved by 98.1%
of voters. Presidential and parliamentary elections are slated to be held in
the coming months. What should be a moment of celebration by Egypt's
friends has instead invited withering criticism and calls to abandon this
important U.S. ally at a critical moment in their history.

Obviously, the election results are a bit too good to be
true. Powers adds, however, that the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters were
boycotting the elections and that the turnout was comparable to that of the
election that empowered Mohamed Morsi.

She notes:

The Washington Post editorial board
recently blasted Egypt's "bogus
democracy" for the constitution's alleged failure to sufficiently
diminish the power of the military. They then demanded the U.S. cut off all
aid. Secretary
of State John Kerryinsinuated that the vote in favor of the constitution
involved fraud, though none has been proven. His complaint ignores the Muslim
Brotherhood's boycott of the referendum, which might explain the lack
of opposition in the results as well as the lower-than-expected turnout. Thirty-nine
percent of eligible voters came out; slightly more than the 33% who
voted in the referendum for President Mohammed Morsi's 2012 constitution.

Amr Moussa, the
president of the committee that drafted the new constitution, expressed
frustration with how the historic nature of this referendum is being ignored in
the West. He told me in an interview, "This is the first time that women
have full political, social and economic rights and can hold all government
positions. The right of belief is now absolute. The right to express yourself
freely [is protected]. This is all new."

These
rights are fundamental to democracy and were absent in the previous "democratic"
Morsi constitution.

Dr. Mona
Makram-Ebeid, a former member of Egypt's parliament and a professor at the
American University in Cairo, told me, "Women are making history in Egypt.
This referendum propelled women into the mainstream of political life. For the
first time it says in the constitution there is equality between men and women.
It condemns any violence against women, which includes domestic violence."

As always, it boggles the mind. Egypt affirms a constitution
that gives women more rights than they ever had before. It votes for a constitution
that guarantees the right to worship as you choose and to express yourself
freely. And it votes for a constitution that takes steps to tamp down the
epidemic of violence against women.

Left thinking politicians and media outlets are scandalized.
They prefer an elected Mohamed Morsi, a candidate who would have done
everything in his power to oppress free expression and women’s rights.

Yes, Powers continues, the new constitution gives more power
to the military. And yet, as former Obama administration envoy Frank Wisner
told Powers, the Egyptian people prefer order to chaos. They do not want to
become like Libya, Syria and Yemen.

Obviously, the best way to accomplish these goals is to keep
Secretary Kerry’s mind on other problems.

Lefties get so excited about transformation, revolution and "living in the moment," but most people recognize that chaos leads to a lot of rather bad things. So the editorial boards carry on about how it's "not enough," perpetuating the chaos.

That's how Chile got Pinochet, who then became the cause of so much gnashing of cognoscenti teeth for decades. You elect a radical lunatic like Allende, or Morsi in Egypt, and look what happens. It's not complicated: People want things to work. The Left wants to reinvent everything to create heaven on earth, and it never quite works out that way.